E3 2015 Post-Mortem Part 4: Final Thoughts and Summary

To wrap up my thoughts on E3 2015, I thought I’d do something fairly simple; an overall impression of the show with a few sprinklings of my own personal awards and dubious honours here and there.

It was difficult to be excited for gaming in 2014; we had several disappointing failures in the AAA market, and countless controversies that ended up boiling into political correctness and senseless internet arguments. The same held true for E3 that year; pretty much every big game at the show was one we knew was coming (or being re-released in some cases) and as a result, the show didn’t have that much spark to it.

Positive takeaways

• ·         E3 2015 was a pleasant surprise to me in many ways. We had the big announcements of titles fans have been waiting years for and on top of that the big titles we were expecting to see were covered quite fall with Fallout 4 leading the charge at Bethesda’s conference. Not only that but we also had Shenmue 3, Final Fantasy 7 HD and The Last Guardian, titles which many believed we would never see or play. If I had played any the previous iterations of those titles then Sony’s presser would have taken the crown by a mile for me; but as it stands, I’m simply too excited for Fallout 4 to put Sony at the top spot this year.

• ·         The amount of gimmicks and peripherals shown off on-stage was drastically reduced, leading to far less awkward moments that wasted time at the press conferences. No Kinect, no PlayStation camera, no Ubisoft fitness games (Despite them still having to shove in the next Just Dance game!); it made the better pressers run much smoothly and shows that the big companies know that we don’t watch the show for poorly thought out methods to play games. The lone exception to this is EA who are still being held back by their groan-worthy mobile titles and sports games.

Negative takeaways

• ·         Mobile is here to stay and is becoming more prominent than ever thanks to its demonstration at EA’s presser. Mobile gaming has become largely synonymous with casualization and poor business practices in the gaming community and I have to agree with them. With the exception of some titles, the common practice of mobile gaming is to make the gameplay as basic and addictive as possible, whilst all the while working to extract every last penny from the pockets of consumers. It’s a ugly section of the games industry that needs to ease off, but with more and more companies such as Konami and Sega shifting to mobile the only real way to end it is to stop paying out real money for silly little in-game currencies.

• ·         Anti-consumerist practices are still running rampant in the current generation of hardware and the worst offender this year was exclusive DLC. Ever since the PlayStation 3 and 360 generation, this problem has been getting worse; back then Microsoft was always touting Xbox as “the home of Call of Duty”, forcing PS3 and PC owners to wait an extra month for extra content. This year marked the point the tables turned; now Sony is more anti-consumer in the way they have attached exclusive DLC to just about every multi-platform release they spoke about. Sadly as much as I’d like to deny it, this practice has worked in boosting profits for a specific console; why else would the companies continue to do it even after all the negative feedback they’ve received? As with micro transactions, exclusive DLC will continue until people stop buying it on the system it comes to first.

Winners and losers (A quick summation for those who haven’t read the previous parts)

• ·         Best conference: Bethesda
• ·         Most improved of the big companies: Microsoft
• ·         Least progressive of the big companies: EA
• ·         Most pointless appearance: Pele at EA’s press conference
• ·         Most disappointing: Nintendo’s Direct event
• ·         Biggest reveals (and cheers): Sony
• ·         Most awkward moment: “Let’s make a meme!” at Ubisoft’s press conference
• ·         Strongest return: The Last Guardian
• ·         Missing in action: Half Life 3 (Or indeed anything Valve related!)
• ·         Game of the show: Fallout 4
• ·         Honourable Mentions: Metal Gear Solid 5, XCOM 2, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided,        Horizon: Zero Dawn

Overall, I’d say that this year’s E3 was mostly a strong success; it generated a massive amount of excitement for proper games rather than hardware hype, something which hasn’t been seen at the show for years. Of course there always will be a disappointing moment or two but above all else, E3 2015 genuinely excited me and really, that’s the main thing I look for every time the show returns to Los Angeles.

Be sure to check out the other parts of my E3 2015 Post-Mortem further down the page.